Across the Universe
by sanctum-c
Summary: Aeris and Tifa reunite in unexpected circumstances: the end of the world.


The fear faded fast. Pain followed, a crack of agony allowing for focus on nothing else. Something larger occurred in the middle distance but impossible to focus. Countermeasures. React, contain, limit, mitigate. Instinct to shield or cover, to move something, to counteract with a limb. Even something as crude as using a mouth to grasp, to manipulate, to aid with circumstances. Limbs too precise a detail at this juncture, a level of fine control beyond current capabilities. Another vector; the need to impress instructions and outcomes on another agent, one able to work at a far lower level. Inelegant but functional.

Too late. The objective would need conveying before the pain. Before the fear. Nor did such an agent remain. The last of long gone.

A final method remained, a more direct intervention used for the most dire circumstances. Too late now. Nothing to push against, nothing to repel or absorb. Too late to react.

A shift, jagged edges and voids forming throughout. A distant sense of loss. The world now comprised a span within a border, a rapidly shrinking shape, the outer edges dissolving into the dark. No. The world was splitting, like oil droplets in water; each one detached and separate. Droplets floating away from the central mass.

How deep could the damage go?

The edges continued to boil away into lumps and clumps; a rapidly shrinking sphere. More fear now, vague realisation of what had occurred, what caused this change in amongst the shock and horror of the changes.

A lurch and a larger section of the whole span away into the dark. Fear overwhelmed – followed by loss, panic and dread. Another shift and voids surrounded on all sides, spaces opening up like chasms, the blackness in between dissolving the world, dissolving the Mako. The detail of Lifestream eaten away – and with it knowledge and memory.

The panic became more acute, sharper, easier to focus on. Familiar. The nature, the truth of the disaster still vague but easier to perceive. A conjecture of what might have occurred from those glimpses of witnesses. But what would happen when the fizzingly edge of the void drew too close? Or when the gaps between the rocks became greater than she could bear?

Rocks?

She?

If only she could find a purchase or something to hold onto. Her arms and legs not as firm or as strong as in her youth, but she could, she would endure this as she had endured so much. Echo of a memory and she grit her teeth – still her own even after so many years. She planted her feet, straining against the rushing wind, the roar of the disaster all around her.

A new shift and the rock felt precarious beneath Tifa's feet. Her legs already tired, she needed to sit. Where was her chair? Or the bed? Or a convenient park bench? Anything she could rest on and catch her breath. The grass would do if someone could help her up again. No grass. No house. No room. Nothing beyond a cascade of twinkling points. Some remained motionless, others ascended up in a vast sea all around her. A bright, distant light behind.

The sun shone through the remains of the Planet.

She had seen her home from above once in all her years, aboard the Shinra-26 when it arced up high into the sky to destroy Meteor. The Planet mostly blue; patches of mottled green and grey and yellow forming the vast shapes of the continents. Such detail now lost in the expanding cloud of dust, rock and Lifestream; what remained of her home of some ninety years. What had happened?

The view sufficiently similar to occasional nightmares to call to mind Meteor. Had someone invoked the spell again? And if so, had there been no way to stop it?

"There was no stopping this." A familiar voice behind her. The rock was an irregular lump maybe three meters at its longest and two across. And with her back to their home, stood Aeris Gainsborough. Not the same; her dress immaculate – missing the ragged rent and bloodstains. She could have stepped from the streets of Midgar. Liver spots mottled Tifa's shaking hands. "Humanity did not care enough to look and not even the Planet knew of the approaching disaster until it was too late." Aeris spoke with the warmth and softness of memory.

"Aeris." Tifa's voice strained and worn down from a lifetime. Was this it? The pair of them together? A distant ghost and a crone who had lost sense of time and space and yet impossibly here.

"Tifa." The other woman smiled. "It's been too long since we talked like this."

An absurd notion; they had both been part of the Lifestream, part of each other while also part of the whole. Part of everyone; good, bad, indifferent. A wave of discomfort. The collection of multiple entities comprised not only their mutual friends and Avalanche but distasteful examples of humanity. Hojo. Don Corneo. President Shinra. Sephiroth. The charlatans and abusers who both preceded and came later. But no longer. A definitive start and end to her. The shared memory from within the Lifestream gone, leaving only fleeting echoes. She was no longer part of the whole. She was no longer on the Planet. "I think I need to sit."

Her legs gave way, Aeris darting forward to sit beside her. Easy to become jealous of the other's seeming youth. The ease with which she could move, could crouch. The smoothness of her skin, the only wrinkles she boasted were laughter lines at her eyes. A stark contrast to the heavy reality for Tifa. "Do you remember Costa del Sol?"

Not a question of particular pertinence right now. A seemingly non-sequitur derived from nothing. But the mental echoes remained; of Aeris knowing more, of being more. "I do." A smile. "But I went back more than once. When do you mean?"

"When we were there." Aeris leant closer. "We'd just gotten off the boat and stepped onto the dock and-"

_-the air rippled with the heat, their foreheads dripping sweat. They needed to cool off and needed a break. Aeris took Tifa's hand and they hurried without running to the nearest swim-wear shop. Concern over her scar ensured Tifa bought a one-piece covering more skin than she wanted in the sweltering heat, but Aeris had no such compulsion. She purchased the smallest bikini should could. They changed and raced to the beach. Once under way - days later - Aeris talked about how she-_

"-wanted to go back."

"You never got another chance," Tifa murmured, her voice firmer. Her legs felt better already, her back no longer ached. "Why did you ask about Costa del Sol of all things?"

"To make you think about it." Aeris nodded. "Look at your hands again."

Her hands were smooth, steady and free of liver spots and Tifa incongruously wore the same swimsuit she did back on the Costa del Sol beach. "What the-"

"Your mental state affects your appearance." Aeris sprang to her feet. "Don't feel limited to how you were." She cocked her head to one side. Leaning forward, her hair greyed to a glossy silver, the laughter lines from her eyes spreading into wrinkles and she stooped. A stranger stood in her place – but a stranger who could have passed for Aeris Gainsborough at perhaps eighty years old. "I can try this if you would like?"

"Not sure I like it." Tifa's voice clear and light in her mouth. How long since? She did not precisely crave youth, but the aches and joint pain she could do without. Her skin lost some of its vitality, her vision dulling slightly. She wore pants and a sweater. "I think you should look like you. I…" An experimental breath, no pain, no wheeze in her lungs. "This will do me." Aeris's form wavered and now the Midgar flower girl stood beside her again. Tifa got to her feet. Easier to focus now. "Something hit us didn't it?"

A devastating visitor from space from an unseen vector and whose arrival wreaked untold damage. The cloud of dispersing rocks widened further behind them, the space around clouded with dust and debris. Too far to see anything clearly fortunately; anything left behind best not to witness.

"I remember about as much as you." Aeris sighed. "I may have been part Cetra, but we are not that much different to the humans in the Lifestream."

"What about the others?" Tifa forced her voice to remain level.

"I think-" Aeris gestured. "They might be like us." A vast number of the other rocks were tinged with green. "The Lifestream lives on even if the Planet does not. Some conceivably might return as themselves. Others…" She shrugged helplessly. "Strength of memory is the key; I was always removed. And you- I'm so sorry Tifa." Aeris took her hands. "I rescued you first. I thought I could save all our friends but-"

"But they are still out there." A strange feeling of free-fall. "But… what then?"

Aeris offered a wan smile. "I couldn't hope to predict. My father had some predictions and conjecture about the energy of the Lifestream. How it persists apart from the whole. I don't know for sure if we're on borrowed time and how much that would be." She slouched, her foot passing into the rock beneath them. "We are little more than projections, that much I'm certain of. What was us in the sense of what was within the Lifestream is clinging to this rock."

"So, we drift?"

"We drift." Aeris gestured to the devastation all around them. "I could not begin to pick out our companions in that mass, at this distance. Nor do I think we could do so fast enough. We are together for now. Perhaps, one day we will find somewhere new."

"New?"

"A new planet with its own Lifestream." Aeris frowned. "We might be able to join with it."

What should have been a comforting thought instead felt queasy. "But that would make us like her. Wouldn't it?"

Aeris sat on the rock. "I know. I… I want to insist we wouldn't be the same. I don't want to destroy another world, and I know we have nowhere to return to. None of us know what she did and what she truly hoped to achieve. So I can't say for sure she was not at least once thinking the same way. And what happened wasn't what she intended."

Had Jenova been in their situation? Drifting through space for an age to fall down to a new world, to destroy part of the indigenous population and influence the destruction of the world? "I don't want to think we're like her either."

"There are two of us. We can both make sure we don't turn out the same." Aeris sounded determined. Though who could say if Jenova constituted a singular entity? Would a collection of individuals from a Lifestream like their own explain the strange autonomy of the Sephiroth clones and sections of Jenova?

Little sense of heat or cold here, and yet Tifa shivered, hands clutching her arms. Beyond the rock, the Planet hung seeming paused in mid-destruction. "I would have thought it would be over by now."

"Factors of scale I think." Aeris leant back on her hands. "We are travelling faster then it looks. We all are." She took a deep breath and shouted a goodbye to everyone she had ever known. Tifa joined in when Aeris reached Avalanche, their voices neither echoing nor seeming to travel. Perhaps the intent would cross the rapidly expanding divide between them and the prior inhabitants of the Planet. Perhaps. Tifa had far more names to recite than Aeris; another pained reminder of the shortness of her life. How long since Tifa returned to the Planet? Those few relevant memories too panicked and confused to figure out the time-frame.

Tifa reached the end of her list and lapsed into silence, attention drifting. A blink. Far distant now, the dust cloud expanding, most of it now invisible. Who knew how long gone past without realising. How to now pass the time? How to mourn for this? What else to do?

They talked but little remained either could say to the other they did not know. Aeris seemed to retain a few specific memories marking her out from the Lifestream. But they had shared so much in the thin sliver of time they spent together; their memories had merged in the Lifestream. Which meant- Tifa flushed. But by the same token; Tifa knew exactly what Aeris thought of her. "We need some way to pass the time."

"Well. There's the entirety of space to stare at if you are so inclined." Aeris smiled. Had she read her thoughts?

"We do." Tifa took another deep breath and moved her hand to touch Aeris's. They might be merely projections of energy, but there was a sensation of warm skin against Tifa's own, the feel of someone living. "But there are other possibilities."

Aeris made an effort to look inscrutable. "Would these possibilities perhaps involve less clothing? And something I am comfortably sure we both regret not trying once before?"

Tifa could not help the laugh. "Something along those lines." Aeris kissed her before she could say anything more.

Time passed.

A haze of kisses and hands stroking over skin. Coiling together, pressing against each other. Voices calling out in ecstasy and worship of the other. Bursts of pleasure in long chains, neither seeming to tire of another embrace, another teasing touch. They stopped eventually; not out of exhaustion, but at Tifa's shocked gasp. Jupiter loomed over Aeris's shoulder. "That can't be-"

"It is." Aeris sat up. The colossal bulk of Jupiter hung above them, gigantic storms rolling across its tempestuous surface. "We might have been going for longer than we realized." She leant against Tifa. "Not sure if its good or bad I feel that there's nothing to stop us continuing." Jupiter could only hold Tifa's attention for so long.

Their next stopping point came when Neptune hung distantly in space. Behind them the Planet lost to view, the other vestiges of the Lifestream long out of sight. "I hope no one hit Jupiter." Tifa frowned. "Or Mars. Or-"

"There might be a Lifestream there even if there is nothing like us." Aeris lounged on the rock beside her. "I can't believe those planets do not live in the same way ours does." She flinched. "Did." So certain; Tifa tried not to dwell on notions of Marlene's granddaughters plunged down onto a desert of red and persisting alone. Always alone.

Exhaustion never touched them, but sleep remained possible. A quick nap might cover vast distances, Tifa awoke to find the Sun tiny. Out this far from the Planet lay a realm seen by none before them – save perhaps Jenova thousands of years prior. Distant objects tumbled on the edge of vision. Far off nebulas and stars grew clearer.

No clear end or division marked the limits of the solar system, but together Aeris and Tifa marked a point when they seemed to leave their home completely. Fizzing, sparking sensations permeated the air and ran through them, fading into the background but never lessening.

The universe opened out before them. The abrupt vertigo made no sense, but persisted; infinity visible in all directions. As if Tifa had swum out from a plateau into deep water and was now drawn further and further out. Nothing below but distant stars and galaxies. Behind the Planet, the other worlds and the sun invisible or almost impossible to pick out. The view of the universe remained unchanged between sleeping and awake. Astronomy had not been a pursuit either Tifa or Aeris dabbled in. Tifa had admired the stars, had known the observable constellations., but they different from these angles and at this distance.

No need for food, no need to drink. No tiredness or alertness. They simply were.

Between love-making, Aeris and Tifa invented stories; fairy tales with differences, silly stories about their friends. Strange fanciful tales of storybook fantasy. Each would listen to the other narrate, or work together to generate more elaborate tales.

The nearest star an incomprehensible distance ahead along with all the distant structures of the universe

They slept.

And slept.

But sleep altered little; the vastness of space reinforced with each and every interval. By how little changed, how once the planets had moved past and behind them, nothing lay nearby. No gauging of size and distance or time. Behind; the shattered cradle of their birth. Ahead; an unknown destination or else infinity. In between, their rock, the last part of the Planet drifted.

No one else like them out here. No sentience or fanciful aliens in flying saucers curious about the fate of the Planet. Thankfully no Jenova or another like her.

After one slumber, Tifa awoke to find Aeris sketching figures and numbers onto the rock, each line almost nothing beyond a ghostly echo of green energy. Tiny, fiddly details. "A curiosity." Aeris shrugged when Tifa asked about it. "Mathematics."

Math to Tifa had always been simple stuff. How to calculate change, wages, gross and net, inventory, occasionally helping Marlene and her children and children's children with homework. What Aeris sketched on the rock was something far more complex. An estimate of distance – a distance in parsecs greater than they had covered and near beyond imagining. "Incredible."

Aeris huffed. "And near useless. Estimates, all of it." Her attention shifted from the glow to the vast star fields ahead. The lines flickered out.

"But you spent so long-" Tifa started.

Aeris smiled. "Just a distraction. You're awake now." She slid her arm around Tifa's waist.

Vast and strange swathes of colour hung in the far distance. The collected artefacts of the universe; nebula, neutron stars, a trillion suns, galaxies. Perhaps the mathematical terror of singularities.

The smear of colour comprising the visible part of the galaxy hanging overhead never moved appreciably. Tifa murmured a joke regarding the scale of space from a half-remembered book of an unknown life-time ago. And yet it held true. Space was big. Mind-bogglingly big. Tifa stayed to watch the stars and day-dream; Aeris chose instead to slumber.

She did not return for some time.

Tifa now held time in abundance. So much of her previous life spent on artificial necessities, sacrificing whole hours, days, weeks, months, years to support a comfortable life. The more interesting, selfish times fitted in around long work hours. But here there was nothing but the other. No jobs to do or people to care for. No food to cook or tests to study for. If they both awake, Tifa could devote her time to Aeris. They had shared intimacy, intellectual pursuits, creative output and company. When Aeris slumbered; all too tempting to copy her.

More periods of consciousness punctuated by periods of sleep. Even dozing for centuries, the huge, incomparable vastness of space remained hard to grasp. No meteors or wandering planets in sight. No other life. No abandoned vessels of some other life, or the results of some conspiracy from the Planet managing to venture so far out. Nothing to hint at something as outlandish as the great works of another age and race. The stars still utterly distant. There remained the chance something was closer than she knew; though close, like the scale of the universe, a relative concept with little meaning here.

Boredom forced increasing slumber; for a long time, Tifa did little else, surfacing every now and again to see if Aeris was awake. For an untold span of time, her companion remained absent. When next Tifa awoke to her companion, Aeris seemed fainter. Something wrong but maddeningly Aeris still smiled when Tifa sat beside her. "Glad I got to see you one last time."

"Last-" Tifa shivered. "Aeris?"

"I had to make a choice." She gestured ahead. "We're heading for a star. Heading for a planet if the math is right." She bit her lip. "I might have told a few fibs."

"Fibs? But- Reaching another planet. That's good isn't it? How did you-"

"I remember the Lifestream. All those souls and voices and memories. I didn't think it would do any good. But there was a space division a century after you returned to the Planet – you might remember?" Tifa shook her head. Aeris shrugged. "They figured out a possible planet that could support life. They knew where it was and how long it would take to get there." Aeris traced her finger across the rock. "I drew on their calculations and research to work it out for us."

Tifa waited for her to continue, but Aeris said nothing. She took the bait. "How long?"

"Twice the time we had remaining; we are not infinite. Our energy will eventually dissipate across the universe. Has been since the start." Aeris laughed. "We can't die. We'll persist in some form. Just like everyone else." A beat. "But we won't be us and- And I didn't want that for you. Didn't want to just fade away like this, adrift."

"Aeris? What did you-"

"We can still affect physical matter." Aeris rested her hand on the rock. "It's not easy, it's not quick but it can be done. I've been pushing you in the right direction, at the right speed. Not easy to calculate, but I had the most brilliant scientific minds on the Planet to help. So you'll get there."

The notion of an end to the journey, unavoidably tempered by Aeris's choice of words. "Why won't we both get there? Why just me?" Tifa's voice low, fearing the answer; Aeris said nothing. "What did you do?"

"I used up my quotient. To get enough speed." Aeris smiled. "Bad habit I know; keep on letting myself go to keep you around." Aeris lay back on the rock, hands clasped over her stomach. "Thank you for sharing this time with me." She brushed her fingers along Tifa's arm. "So glad I got to say goodbye."

"Aeris, don't-"

"I can't stop it." Already fainter, a translucent tracery of Lifestream energy over the rock. "I gave everything I could to your momentum. But you'll get there. And if we're lucky, there'll be life there. Maybe even people. But either way; you can join with that Planet. And you'll be with others again."

"But you won't," Tifa reached out to touch her, only with difficulty finding the point Aeris began.

"At least one of us will make it." Aeris closed her eyes. "Goodbye, Tifa." Her form wavered.

"No." If Aeris could do it, so could Tifa. All her thoughts, desires and energy funnelled into Aeris. Like fumbling for a silk ribbon with wet hands, she scrabbled for the thread of Aeris but could not grip a firm grip. On and on she tried, all her focus and energy expended on keeping the thin sliver of energy with her on the rock.

Another eternity passed and what sights the universe could offer were lost to Tifa. She could not take her gaze or attention away from the last echoing traces of Aeris Gainsborough.

* * *

_The shooting star was one of a number falling from the sky of late. They streaked through the atmosphere, leaving an unusual green trail in their wake, lighting up the night sky. The mix of oxygen and nitrogen in the air ignited as one such rock, a chunk two meters by three, tumbled towards the ground. Perhaps an observer might have noted two faint traces of green on the surface as the rock fell. Noted the glow as it persisted for agonised seconds once the rock slammed into the ground and threw debris up into the air. Noted that the glow did not fade so much as flow from the rock and into the soil._

_Deep below the ground, the river of energy once called the Lifestream churned unceasingly. The glow sank down until it merged with the flow._


End file.
